More than 700,000 people watched the flight of the plane flying from Kuala Lumpur to Taipei, aboard which was the Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi. The flight has become “the most tracked flight in the history of Flightradar24”, representatives of the public Internet service, which allows real-time tracking of aircraft movements, said the day before.

Nancy Pelosi’s first official visit to Taipei, amid threatening rhetoric from China, whose communist authorities claim Taiwan as its territory, was the top story in most of the world’s media. He also did not go unnoticed in Germany. The opinions of Germany’s leading politicians and the German press were divided on this issue.

No visit authorization required

China should tone it down, said Ulrich Lechte, a foreign policy spokesman for the liberal Free Democratic Party of Germany (FDP) faction in the Bundestag. “Western politicians, diplomats and businessmen will continue to visit Taiwan in the future. They do not need permission to do so,” he wrote on his website. “It is worth considering that the high representative of Germany could also pay a visit. A member of the German government in Taipei – why not?” – said the politician in an interview with the German edition of the Rheinische Post.

The head of the Bundestag’s international affairs committee, a member of the ruling coalition of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), Michael Roth, is in many ways sympathetic to him. “It is clear that the communist leadership in Beijing sees democracy and diplomacy as a threat,” he said. He noted that Pelosi is not the first US or European lawmaker to visit Taiwan. These “visits are not aggressive or provocative. They do not pose a threat to China’s territorial integrity,” the politician wrote on Twitter.

China’s threatening gestures about Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan were “totally unacceptable”, Christian Democratic Union (CDU) foreign policy expert Norbert Röttgen called “completely unacceptable”. “The Chinese leadership’s repeated open statements that, if necessary, it will achieve ‘reunification’ with Taiwan through military force must be unequivocally condemned,” the politician said in an interview with the Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland group. At the same time, Röttgen considered the timing of the visit to be extremely unfortunate. “Currently, there is more than enough international tension in connection with Russia’s aggressive war,” he said.

Left Party foreign policy expert Gregor Gysi was unequivocally critical of the visit. He recalled that the Chinese leadership is absolutely irreconcilable when it comes to territorial issues. “As you know, if a state has diplomatic relations with Taiwan, it does not have diplomatic relations with China. It is in the interest of the people of Taiwan to refrain from any provocation by Western states,” Gizi told German news portal Watson. . According to the left-wing politician, Beijing will leave Taipei alone as long as the communist leadership does not see a threat to the “one-China policy”.

Rhetoric can quickly turn to aggression

While in Taiwan, Nancy Pelosi did not forget about the war in Ukraine. “As Russia wages its deliberate and illegal war against Ukraine, killing thousands of innocent people – even children – it is important that the United States and our allies make it clear that we will never give in to the autocrats,” she said. The fact that the confrontation between Beijing and Taipei is developing largely in line with the scenario that led to today’s bloodshed in Ukraine was also noted by German Chancellor Annalena Baerbock, presenting her view of German geopolitics during a speech at the New School private research university in New York. York.

“China’s statements on Taiwan raise serious questions,” she said, noting that recent months have shown how quickly rhetoric can turn to aggression. “It is unacceptable to us when a larger country, contrary to all international law, invades the territory of its smaller neighbors – and this also applies to China.

“China is like an elephant in a china shop”

The German press generally sided with Nancy Pelosi. “The timing of US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan is not very convenient. While Russia’s war on Ukraine is testing the resilience of Western states and their economies, we need everything but a But according to In fact, Pelosi is right: Taiwan’s democracy deserves our support, and we cannot allow China to veto how we deal with the island nation.

At the same time, according to the publication, the Western world “should not be impressed by the usual intimidation tactics emanating from Beijing”: “Like Russia in Europe, China behaves in Asia like a bull in a china shop.” . the example of Russia has shown, cowardice in the face of bullies only invites them to even more aggressive behavior.”

A similar position was expressed by the German newspaper Stuttgarter Zeitung. Adding fuel to a blazing fire when tensions between the US and China are already high is not a very smart idea. But “despite all of Pelosi’s praise for Taiwanese democracy, the purpose of this fleeting visit is almost exclusively to show Beijing its limits,” the German publication said in a commentary.